Study: Education, Government Are Prime Targets for IT Sales

Government and education are among the strongest opportunities in North America for IT sales, according to the most recent findings of an ongoing Harte-Hanks study.

Called "Finding Opportunity in a Challenging Market," the study indicates that buying plan indexes of eight areas within the Harte-Hanks CI Technology Database are "well off" their peaks from the past two years, including personal computers, servers, printers, data storage installation, telephone systems and LAN installation.

Still, the identified increasing pockets of opportunity exist in the government, education, insurance and medical sectors.

The study and the purchase indexes are updated monthly and examine changes in technology buying plans from June 2000 to September 2002 based on 398,673 interviews with IT buyers in North America.

The North American industry segments most interested in buying personal computers in September were higher education at 39 percent, state government at 26 percent, local government at 31 percent, insurance carriers at 28 percent, hospitals at 32 percent and federal government at 20 percent.

Higher education also led in plans to buy computer servers with 15 percent, followed by local government at 14 percent, hospitals at 13 percent, state government at 12 percent and retail at 10 percent.

The study also shows that e-business provides a growing revenue opportunity for the IT industry. Sixty percent of IT buyers at companies with e-business applications said their e-business development budgets increased in 2001, and the same percentage expect growth in expenditures by the end of the year.

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